


o father, what a hell of witchcraft.

by themissinglenk



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin
Genre: Angels and Demons, M/M, Supernatural AU - Freeform, from tumblr, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 07:42:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1042182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themissinglenk/pseuds/themissinglenk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What circle of hell are you from, Armin?” he choked out on a tongue like sandpaper. Armin shrugged and shifted his weight to the other hip, rolling his eyes around to meet Eren’s with a strange compassion. “The one where I’m too smart for everyone else so they all hate me.” // from tumblr, open prompts, supernatural contemporary au.</p>
            </blockquote>





	o father, what a hell of witchcraft.

The shriek shivered in the basement, ripe with the pain of a thousand tortured souls—perhaps borrowed, perhaps mocked, perhaps true—and then the blood-curdling sound warped into a cascade of giggles that for a moment Eren couldn’t hear past the ringing in his ears.

And then the ringing dissolved into the cold whispering echo of water dripping in some distant corner, of the hum of the world overhead, of the soft susurrating chuckle drifting from the throat of the young man who’d materialized in the center of the Solomonic Circle.

No, not materialized—just simply not there one second, and the next— _bam_ —

Eren tried to swallow over the large lump in his throat; it was almost impossible. His mouth was dry.

The laughter faded into a brittle hush and in the quiet, Eren ventured, “Evening, scoundrel.”

The shadows slithered in the basement. A few meager unadorned bulbs hung dusty and crooked from the ceiling, the kind that danced and bobbed when you pulled the fragile chain to switch on the light. It smelled like death and secrets down here. There, in that corner—a wall lined with a menagerie of oddities and disturbing prizes, jarred insects and deformed body parts, reeking of formaldehyde, parading along the shelf near a whole human spine, a rose submerged in chemicals, and one of those awful clapping monkeys with the bugged-out eyes and rusty cymbals. Over there, moldering books of centuries past and a whole set-up of preserved butterflies. Family jewels from ages ago surrounded an original leather Louis Vuitton overflowing with death and spirit photography, and little disassembled jinx bags: black cat’s claws, human teeth, a tiny glass bottle of raven’s blood—

“What a beautiful place!” crooned the demon, but if Eren had seen him outside the summoning ring, he would have had major doubts. Since when did demons moonlight as innocent-looking sixteen-year-olds with dark sensual blue eyes? That face spoke of youth, but the way that messy blond hair was tied back evoked a medieval feel, and the way that hip was cocked out just mildly to the side, one hand propped upon it, hinted at a gravitas far beyond portrayed adolescence. God dammit, the veil over the fallen ones—it was so charmingly twisted and distracting—

“It’s just a basement,” Eren grunted, circling the Solomonic ring. His fingers were clammy. In his palms he nervously fiddled with the things that had done the trick—the cemetery dirt, the raven’s feathers, the moonstone and blade carved from bone, the little blank-faced witch’s doll that was serving as proper temporary conduit, voodoo doll of the esteemed and well-to-do. “My father’s basement. You like his taste in toys? Most dads waste their time in the garage or at the bar. Nope, mine wants to crack Paracelsus’s ‘little man’ formula or catch a spirit in a bottle to be his servant.”

“Aw…” The pity was especially rotten from those angel lips; the demon’s blue eyes flashed sadistic and sarcastic and vaguely suspicious in the dim light, following Eren critically. “You’re not enough for daddy dearest, are you, baby?”

Stab of truth through the heart. “ _Shut up_.” Eren’s jaw tightened. He came to a stop at the edge of the chalk-drawn Solomonic circle, all the detailed lines and runes. His heart would pound right out of his chest soon if he wasn’t careful. “What’s your name, shithead?”

“That’s not very nice at all.” Pause. Tip of the head. Like a cherub gone wrong, a possessed putto. Jesus Christ—were the centers of those bewitching blue eyes vaguely elongated?

“I don’t think you’re in the position to lecture me,” Eren grumbled, flashing the witch’s doll in his palm. “I could carve crosses into your wrists by stabbing this thing in the right place and you know it.”

“Armin.” The voice was like burnt silk, cutting through the tense hush in the basement. Was that a little glimmer of vulnerability at the sight of the witch’s doll? “My name is Armin.”

“But it’s not your real name,” Eren surmised. “Because if I knew your real name, power over you would be mine.”

“Maybe it _is_ my real name,” the demon whispered, and Eren faltered for a breath or two, despising this game of wit and lies that saturated the craft and the hunt.

“What circle of hell are you from, Armin?” he choked out on a tongue like sandpaper.

Armin shrugged and shifted his weight to the other hip, rolling his eyes around to meet Eren’s with a strange compassion. “The one where I’m too smart for everyone else so they all hate me.”

Eren was struck with the sudden idea that he’d summoned a rather puny demon. A loner type, a double agent type, the one that avoided legions like the plague (wasn’t _that_ a funny phrase to use here) and was more prone to contracts to save its own skin. Demons under contracts were held under different principles, his father had said once. Demons roaming loose from leashes were flirting with destruction.

What the fuck kind of world was this?

“What do you want?” Armin’s eyes had narrowed; his voice was suddenly like ice. “Are we gonna strike a deal here, or can you stop wasting my time?”

“Be my Mephistopheles,” Eren sputtered. _Thump. Thump_. His heart was a jackrabbit in his throat.

“Excuse me?” Ah, and there was that flicker of eras past again in the almost too-proper way Armin cocked a brow and leaned to the side. Dress him up for the Ren Faire or stick a page boy cap on him, and it all would have worked.

“You heard me.” Eren’s stomach knotted as he realized he was dancing dangerously close to the edge of the chalk circle. “I want your diabolical mark. I want to be your conduit. I want you to be my familiar.”

“I could slurp your soul out of you faster than you could down a Jell-O shot,” Armin hissed, stepping up nose-to-nose with Eren. The energy in the air crackled. It seemed the shadows swarmed like they were alive. Armin appraised him with an almost animalistic scowl. He wasn’t any bigger than Eren; that was surprising and somewhat amusing. The pry of his stare was deep. “Why?” Armin pressed. “Your father’s a demonologist, an alchemist. You’re his pet project trainee. Why the fuck would I bind myself to a boy whose old man knows how to banish me?”

“My mother wasn’t really my mother.”

The look on Armin’s face changed in an instant. Eren breathed a sigh of relief, but his shoulders stayed rigid.

“I’m not stupid. I’m not some paltry human looking for power.”

A slow, wicked curiosity was spreading on Armin’s face. It was almost erotic. Eren blamed that on the immortal’s seven sins artillery. _Lust_. “What are you, then?” Armin whispered.

He almost gagged to say it; it pained him. He cast his eyes away. Confessed, “I’m a Titan. Half angel, half human. Born of the Cain tradition when my father slept with a descendant of the Nephilim. And I need your help, Armin.”

“An angel and a demon, playing together!”

“Laugh it up, chump.”

“A _Titan!_ A Titan… Your daddy banged an angel! Scandalous—deplorable—you say _we’re_ the monsters, but humans are _fucked up_.”

“So will you help me, or what?”

“Why do you need my help?”

Eren’s fists clenched. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, a chill skittering down his spine. His throat was raw as he gritted out, “ _Killing the other Titans_.”

The first look on Armin’s face was soft terror. And then it was a delighted grin, eyes dancing. And then the smile became a greedy, sultry smirk, and his fingers wiggled impatiently, and he hopped from foot to foot like an imp dancing for some coin.

“If we make a contract, you know I get your soul in the end,” he reminded gaily.

“We’ll see about that,” Eren croaked, scuffing his toe against the outermost lines of the chalk circle. Breaking the seal. Opening the barrier. The chill in the basement air sharpened to a point and Armin stepped out of the binding circle with a sensual shudder and a sigh like shaking off shower steam or a thin fall of snow. He was so inhumanly graceful, with that fine blond hair like a lost prince of the underworld.

“ _Ah_ …” he breathed, casting Eren a seductive glance. His fingers were hot as he took his hand in his own, and before Eren could even ask how or when or what next, Armin sank his teeth into the meat of Eren’s palm and Eren cried out in shock. _Shit_ , that hurt! Scorching, bruising pain, flash of red behind his eyes and waves of sick throbbing heat. The blood smeared some of the chalk, flung from his hand. Armin shoved the witch’s doll into it, staining the white. Connecting their souls. One conduit to another, channels flying open.

Armin wound him close like just another step in a diabolic waltz, licking the blood from the corner of his mouth and dipping Eren low, hand an intimidating heat at the base of his spine.

“What is normal to the spider is chaos to the fly,” he whispered. “I can taste the almost-holy in your blood. You’re mine now, beautiful boy.”

Eren choked on a ragged gasp—not afraid, no, but just struggling to keep in control. The thirst for revenge boiled in his blood and with an angry huff of breath, he blew some blond hair out of his eyes where Armin hovered over him. “No,” he husked, grinning coldly. “You’re _mine_. And you know it.”

Armin kissed him hard, biting, bruising, tongue shoving forth to tangle with Eren’s. Eren tasted his own blood. He let Armin pull him to the dusty basement floor; straddling Armin there on the concrete, there was no salvation for the chalk circle. Oops. God damn it _all_ , making out with this demon was like rolling on the purest ecstasy, all sweet undiluted sensations and dizzying sparks from nerve to nerve, sweet taste and silky feel, press of a body that felt so real and mortal but—the passion ached deep in the soul—

What was that? A salty tear, rolling down the side of Armin’s face. Funny. Eren didn’t comment on it. Too distracted by the desperate roll of the demon’s hips into his. Shit, what was this, some sort of binding rite? The kisses infusing him with the sinister power, infecting him with the demon’s hex? Maybe. His father had said that once, that sex was the commingling of two souls on one plane, the closest alchemy men had to holiness, stripped of romance and left to primal, carnal connection—

 _O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies in one small orb of a particular tear_ …

Eren was ready to destroy all the other Titans and take his place as rightful heir of the Nephilim. He’d already decided that when that happened—because it would; he would make certain—he’d keep Armin. All hail the prince of the Cain tradition, with his beautiful pet demon on a chain.

Amen.  
  
  
 _ **end.**_


End file.
